But if you have any shred of decency you should be on the players side and not the money-hungry owners, who really don't mean that much in terms of the awesome product we see every Sunday.

And what Cro said played right into the owners hands.

Therefore, I am against Cro saying it.

True, mostly because Jerry Jones is the mother ******* super devil, dude seems like pure evil who eats puppies and kittens and steals from the cups of homeless people.

But really, the players have no leverage or negotiating power here. Ok, the league is making bank, thats great, but the owners have a crap ton of money each and can easily out wait the players. The players need these jobs and eventually theyll have to cave on quite a bit of stuff.

See I just can't accept this answer. The players are excessively well compensated to play this game, knowing full well what the risks involved are and whilst more needs to be done for players once their career is over, the NFL actually is ahead of most work environments in providing that, bottom line is the owners spend a lot of money to make the game what it is and the majority of that spending goes to the players who are stupidly well compensated. Any player who has an NFL average career should come out of it set for life. In that 3.5 years those players will make over a million, that's more than a lot of people will make in their lifetime.

Another major point is that it is the owners who that have the sports best interest at heart, players deal in 10 year time frames, most careers don't last close to that long so their concerns are very short sighted and based on making as much now as possible. The owners meanwhile make investments that require long term ownership to actually make any money(assuming that is even why they bought a team) so their decisions are based on the long term viability of the sport and like any industry it will only last as long as investors are willing to make it happen.

I want to side with the players but for the most part their arguements are just so poorly constructed that it is really hard, anyone who has neutrally observed this whole process would have a hard time siding with the players as it stands, every fan knows the reasoning behind rookie scaled contract.

Sure the owners could do more, the one thing I don't buy is that teams are losing money because if that comment was true they could basically pimp slap the players into a corner where they would have absolutely no bargaining position and it is the simplest of statements to prove. If teams are making losses, any of them, then provide their financial statements. You show the players that you are losing money then it becomes a pretty easy scenario, it literally becomes you need to take a paycut of this much, rookie scale contracts are this and in return we will institute better after playing health care and support, deal done, sign on the dotted line.

That is the only reason that the owners come off as the bad guys here, if they would back up what they've said it is game over for the players.

My big problem is that I still feel like this is more of a battle between the owners than owners vs players. Simple fact is that the players are starting a good distance behind the eight ball, they are not in a position where a lockout helps them at all and it is in their best interests to get a deal done.

I dont agree the owners arent the bad guys here. Both sides are getting greedy to me, the league is making big bucks and both sides want to cash in. The players are the ones that are bringing in the money, so they want more, but the owners are the ones spending a fortune and investing, so they want their cut.

To me, the side getting screwed the most are the fans. No matter how the CBA line falls, the fans will keep having to fork over tons of money to go to games, and to me its pretty sad because neither of these sides is hurting for money yet they still price gouge the ever living hell out of their customers. I think people will begin staying home and watching on tv because the prices are out of control.

At the game, you have to deal with parking, tickets, high concessions, boring tv timeouts, freezing cold or rain, a decent view of the game. At home you get a couch, good view, save a ton of money, 10 beers for the price of 1 at the game, and all you have to deal with is the absurd number of commercials that plague the game today.